460: Ryan Fink and Ty Frackiewicz—Can AI Build My House?

Mike sits down with the two innovative minds behind Digs — an app that's helping to streamline the home-building process. It's a candid look at what happens when tech guys wander into the world of lumber, drywall, and delayed inspections—and try to fix it. If you've ever wondered whether artificial intelligence can actually help build a house, or at least make the whole ordeal a little less maddening, this conversation is for you.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Well, here we go again. It's me, Mike Rowe. This is The Way I Heard It. And Chuck, I'm at one of these home builders conventions a couple of years ago, right? And a couple entrepreneurs pull me aside after my speech and they tell me a story about a company called Diggs that they were determined to start. And it was going to be a company that used AI to make the home building process easier. And I asked them if it was going to have any impact on the number of homes that were behind schedule with construction and over budget. And maybe, you know, could this AI thing, remember, this is over two years ago, have some sort of impact on hiring?

• 0:45Mike Rowe?

  And they were like, yes, yes, yes, yes, it's going to change. It's going to change everything. And I'm like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. You know, I mean, how many entrepreneurs, you know, pitch me on these things? But this company has more than a toehold. It's working. It's growing. They reached out later and started advertising on this podcast, full disclosure. So I just thought with AI in the headlines and with you impersonating a general contractor all those years ago, these guys might be fun to talk to. And as it turns out, they are. I think I might have actually learned something.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll tell you, you really hit the nail on the head with me being able to use this. If this had been around when I built the house that I built, I might still be married. Who knows?

• 1:33Mike Rowe?

  Well, Chuck did get the house built, but maybe next week. This is called Can AI Build My House? If it goes well, if it's well received, we'll follow it up with Can AI Save My Marriage? And I'll let you host that one.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 1:47Mike Rowe?

  Regardless, and in all seriousness, if you're getting your home built and if you're thinking about buying a home, this is software with AI on it that's probably going to change the entire experience for everyone forever. I mean, My thing was, I'm already in the house. I bought it. I didn't have it built. But like, where's my magical guide to every single thing behind the wall? Or under the floor?

• 2:16Speaker 01

  It didn't come with a user's manual.

• 2:18Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Wouldn't it be great if it did?

• 2:20Mike Rowe?

  And that's kind of what this thing is. I think it could be transformational. I don't know. I might run it by my buddies over at this old house as well. They would probably dig it. But

• 2:31Speaker 01

  I would imagine, yeah.

• 2:32Mike Rowe?

  For now, I just thought it would be fun to see what in the wide world of sports is AI gonna do? In the home building industry. Turns out quite a bit. The show's called Can AI Build My House? The answer, right after this.

• 2:50Mike Rowe?

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• 3:36Mike Rowe?

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• 4:22Mike Rowe?

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• 4:36Mike Rowe?

  Hello, geniuses.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Hello. Hello, Mike. That's the best intro I've got.

• 4:40Mike Rowe?

  Well, it goes downhill from here. No, I mean it, man. The headlines have caught up to your thesis, it seems. You've taken artificial intelligence, you've applied it to something near and dear to my foundation. Full disclosure, you've advertised on this podcast in the past. I appreciate that. And it's really been fun to watch and see how this is playing out in real time. Ty, your last name is Frank Skivitch?

• 5:08Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Oh, nailed it.

• 5:09Mike Rowe?

  Ty Frank Skivitch and Ryan Fink.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:12Mike Rowe?

  Isn't there, pardon me, but a more famous Ryan Fink than you out there?

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Not that, not what me and my family.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I thought you were the most.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, like a baseball player or something.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Baseball player, okay.

• 5:22Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. You think AI is going to impact baseball in some way?

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. Baseball is all about math these days, right?

• 5:29Mike Rowe?

  It's all, well, it always has been about math. I mean, is AI going to touch every single dag on thing there is?

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Everything except, you know, what you can physically do with your hands for the foreseeable future.

• 5:40Mike Rowe?

  See, that's where I feel like I look a little bit smarter than I am. You know, I mean, not a day goes by where somebody doesn't ask me to talk about job security in the trades, which is something nobody ever asked about. In fact, it was the opposite, right, Ty? You built houses, what, up north somewhere? Was it Montana?

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Montana, yeah. Yep, started in Washington back home.

• 6:03Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:04Mike Rowe?

  So, let's start there then. Let's start with the trades and workforce, and how the digs product is impacting careers in the trades.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah. So, there's actually a company or a school district we're working with, Copper Country School District, and we're working with Corey Sumis, who's the program director. And they've partnered up with Moil Construction, and they've adopted digs.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  So their students are actually using our software with Moyo Construction to build two homes this year. So before they even graduate high school, they're gonna have two homes under their belt, which is pretty cool.

• 6:43Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:44Mike Rowe?

  Well, obviously, I started in the middle. It's hard to know where to start with a conversation like this. But let's assume the listener is not up to speed with digs. And let's also assume that as a default position, they're bored by software or sentences with software in it, like most people are. Like, they know it's out there. They know it matters. But make it relevant, Ryan.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:02Mike Rowe?

  What is the product? Why is it relevant to people who otherwise would just kind of check out of the whole conversation?

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, so if you're a builder, Diggs has a pre-construction software that helps you be more efficient on the collaboration through selections, through the takeoff, so understanding how much quantities go into the home, all the way to diagramming where those quantities belong. And then if you're a homeowner, Diggs is really relevant because if you're working with a custom home builder, for instance, or you're just purchasing a production home, Diggs, through the build process, our AI takes all of that unstructured build documents, think the floor plan, the selection documents, et cetera, and it structures it into a 3D digital twin, all the way down to your paint colors. So now as a homeowner, instead of getting, you know, a physical binder with about 30 documents relevant to the home,

• 7:52Speaker 02

  you're getting a 2,600% increase on information on your home. So now you can better maintain it, understand it. Hopefully, you don't have a leaky pipe that's gonna burst because you have a cold front coming on, something AI can start to predict and say, hey, there is this cold front coming on. You should probably go around and maintain your home and winterize your hose bibs, for instance.

• 8:12Mike Rowe?

  The thing that I thought was ingenious about the product actually was like a click down from that. So it's, I get the builders need to implement it, and I get the person having the house built will benefit hugely from improved levels of communication I get with the builder, the vendors, with everything that touches the home. But what about when they sell the house? And because most people who move into a new home. Aren't moving into a home they just had built. They're moving to a pre-existing home. What the hell is behind the wall?

• 8:46Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 8:47Mike Rowe?

  What's up in the attic? What's in the crawl space? What's in the basement? What's like, where are the pipes? Where?

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:52Mike Rowe?

  It's like a minefield. And so this digital twin you're talking about essentially is a schematic? That goes all the way down to where you got your wallpaper?

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah. All the way down to your wallpaper, your paint colors, your tile, your grout. The make and model of your appliances. And not only that, once you have the digital twin, it becomes the home fax of the home. So we have car fax. So if you get in an accident, etc. You legally have to report any type of maintenance on your car. And that's tracked in a single database. We have nothing for the home. So you go into, you know, purchasing a home. And if there's water damage, you have no idea that there's ever water damage or there's mold.

• 9:35Mike Rowe?

  And there's no, I mean, aren't there disclosures though through real estate?

• 9:40Speaker 03

  Certain states have certain disclosures, all the way down to some dark things you don't have to tell people. But certain states you are forced to tell people.

• 9:47Mike Rowe?

  You mean like murders and stuff?

• 9:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. There are certain states that you don't have to tell the buyer that that occurred. And then there are states that you have to. It's pretty crazy.

• 9:56Mike Rowe?

  This took a dark day.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  I know, I know.

• 10:00Mike Rowe?

  I want to talk about paint colors and wallpapers and dead bodies.

• 10:06Mike Rowe?

  I mean, that's so interesting that, okay, so if there's no obligation to disclose that something, you know, calamitous happened in the home. What if you're asked directly? Are you compelled to answer, honestly?

• 10:22Speaker 03

  I think it's up to the person themselves.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  It comes up to their morals.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  If they want to hide it or get a higher sales price or if they want to be, you know, open and disclose it, but.

• 10:31Mike Rowe?

  To be clear, digs in no way refers to the getting rid of the body in a vacacious way.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  No, it's not about digging.

• 10:37Mike Rowe?

  It's not about graves.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Slang for the home, just to be clear.

• 10:42Mike Rowe?

  Hi, you build homes.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:44Mike Rowe?

  Obviously, so like this will sound obvious to you and to anybody who's ever built a house. Chuck, I remember you impersonated a general contractor, what, 25 years ago or something?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yes, a little bit longer than that, but yeah.

• 10:56Mike Rowe?

  So like the details?

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:58Mike Rowe?

  I've seen people just check out, almost collapse under the weight of having to decide.

• 11:07Mike Rowe?

  An endless list of things. Is that, that's, that's not going to go away ever, right?

• 11:11Speaker 03

  No, but I mean, hopefully it'll get easier. That's, that's, that's one of our goals with digs. But yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. Uh, when I was building houses for married couples, building a house was so stressful. It was the top three reasons of getting a divorce. Like, that's how powerful that is of making decisions.

• 11:28Mike Rowe?

  Sorry, Chuck.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Well, as it turns out, it didn't work out, so.

• 11:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, it was a nice house, though.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, great.

• 11:36Mike Rowe?

  It's a great house.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, sorry. No, you're good. But with all of the decisions that are made, I mean, it's, yeah, it's pretty, it's daunting. You go in and you have to pick out lighting, but it's, you think you're going to just pick out some ceiling light. No, you have to pick out your garage lighting, your powder bathroom lighting, everything that's going in the house. That's just one aspect of it. Then depending on the size of the house, it just gets bigger.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and tracking all those decisions and do things work together or not? Right now, you're just getting all this, you know, paper. You're taking pictures of that physical products in the showroom, kind of all laid out, and then you're pulling up all these different pictures. It's just very, uh, it's a very broken process today.

• 12:14Speaker 03

  And there's, there's only normally one person that's doing that, which is either the site super, the project manager on the job.

• 12:20Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  But they're working with all the vendors and the subs, and the vendors and the subs, they only care about what their line of work is. So it's up to that one individual to capture all that information, document that information, have it in one spot and make sure that it's all accurate.

• 12:34Mike Rowe?

  And pass it on.

• 12:35Speaker 03

  And pass it on.

• 12:36Mike Rowe?

  Because what, what's easy to forget is that, this is a game of telephone, basically.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Literally.

• 12:42Mike Rowe?

  And the more people you have between you and your basic decision and the ultimate implementation, I mean, it's, it's math, right? People have done studies, like the, the odds of a miscommunication are 100%.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Absolutely. 100%.

• 12:58Mike Rowe?

  It's absolutely going to get screwed up.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 13:02Mike Rowe?

  One of my first thoughts when I looked at the implications and just so people understand, you guys formed Diggs when? Was it three years now?

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, about three years, 2022.

• 13:12Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:13Mike Rowe?

  And I, I sat down with you guys in Vegas somewhere like two years ago.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I don't want to say we were fanboying out when we saw you were the keynote speaker.

• 13:22Mike Rowe?

  Oh, right, right, right. At like an IBS or something at a builder show.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, at the builder show and Kbiz, which is the kitchen and bath show. Um, so there's, I don't know, like six or 7,000 people in the audience and you just, like we were watching you and you're just commanding the audience and I went over to Ty and I was like, we're gonna work with him someday.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  I, I chuckled a little bit and I was like, okay.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  And then persistence paid off. Yeah.

• 13:43Mike Rowe?

  All right, so this is, this took another weird turn. It's a big day for everything. Right, this is where Chuck gets up quietly and locks the door.

• 13:55Mike Rowe?

  Well, yeah, I mean, those events are really interesting for me because I, I usually come in kinda hot and I'm a fan of your industry, but I don't, I don't know much other than there's a giant gathering of entrepreneurs and people in all different strata of business, you know? They're all there for basically the same reason, but with a thousand different variations on a theme. So it's possible really to know what to, what to say to a group like that. So I just get up there and, and essentially try and say, look, I'm a fan of, I'm a fan of building things and making things and, and I'm a fan of doing those things in this country. And more recently, I've become a fan of doing them more effectively.

• 14:41Mike Rowe?

  Efficiency, that word gives me the creeps a little bit because it just kinda feels like the human component just gets completely rubbed out of the equation.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 14:50Mike Rowe?

  But, um, yeah, you reached out and I thought, if your product does what I think you're saying it's going to do, A, what the hell's gonna happen to architects? Because can't a home buyer sit down and essentially in an animated way, create their their home with the tech, just tell it, now I want this room a little bigger, this one a little smaller, I want I want this porch, now I want it bigger. And and essentially create, like rough it out and then give it to the program and then then build the damn thing.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of architects that are building kind of the engineering plans and then ingesting them into digs. That's kind of where we start when you have the construction docs of the floor plan. And then the collaboration on the floor plan happens as well. So if you want to move walls and whatnot, that's where the collaboration with the architect happens. But I think, and Ty knows better than me, but AutoCAD is probably not going to go anywhere anytime soon where you actually create the structure documents. Now.

• 15:56Mike Rowe?

  When you say you create, you mean the architect?

• 15:59Speaker 02

  The architect, yeah.

• 16:00Mike Rowe?

  I'm wondering when the end user has the rudimentary tools to allow him or her to credibly impersonate the architect. Like, is the architectural field one of the ones that feels a little exposed right now?

• 16:16Speaker 02

  I mean, absolutely good. I mean, again, Ty knows knows better than me, but that's one of the areas where kind of AGI, artificial general intelligence, can really make an impact for architects in general. Just because training off of, you know, thousands or millions of floor plans, a smarter AI system could theoretically start to suggest, based on your style, just have a conversation with the AI, this is the type of floor plan. Like Asbils, it could output it.

• 16:46Mike Rowe?

  So like Ty, the AI is going to be like, are you sure you want to put the solarium there?

• 16:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's it's. Yeah, it's it's a weird, that's a weird area. I don't think it'll ever replace an architect. The reason why I think AI will be used to. I know I don't want to say make them more efficient, but it absolutely will make them more efficient. The thing that AI can't do is it can't go to the lot. It can't go and look at the view. It doesn't know that there's a river like 100 feet away from the property line. So that's one of the things that architects and why they're so creative, they're artists, especially from a custom home standpoint. They go to that location, they take pictures, they look at it, and they dream of what this layout and this floor plan can be based on their clients. AI can't replace that.

• 17:39Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five-week, highly immersive pre-apprenticeship program that gets you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately. I'm talking about AI-proof,

• 18:23Mike Rowe?

  six-figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago, and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade. If you or your spouse or your kid or your grandkid are looking for a straight path into a career with no

• 19:06Mike Rowe?

  cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/americasworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/americasworkforceacademy.

• 19:18Mike Rowe?

  Not yet.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:20Mike Rowe?

  But I mean, we got pretty great cameras.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  We do.

• 19:23Mike Rowe?

  And we got drones.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, we do.

• 19:25Mike Rowe?

  And we throw, we fly a drone with a pretty great camera and we map the site. And I'm pretty sure the tech can identify the river at some point.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  That's fair.

• 19:34Mike Rowe?

  Right?

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:35Mike Rowe?

  So, I mean, look, I, I don't know where, where the relative singularity exists in your world. But I'm really interested in this idea that it's, things are moving so fast. I mean, last night in real time, Larry Ellison may have become wealthier than Elon Musk. He just made 300 billion dollars.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:57Mike Rowe?

  Because Oracle reported unbelievable earnings with AI, not from AI, you know? And it just seems like now, a lot of, a lot of companies have been making a lot of money because they've been spending on AI.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:12Mike Rowe?

  Now Oracle made a bunch of money. And I mean, I, I just, my only hesitation in having this conversation with you guys is it's gonna be obsolete in about 48 hours.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:23Mike Rowe?

  But, I mean, isn't that the world you're in? Aren't you constantly waking up and looking around and going, you know, what's new?

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we've been building AI for about 15 years, so we're excited that now the rest of the market has caught up essentially. I think what we're seeing with Oracle is that it's a really major proof point that XAI, that OpenAI, all these large companies are investing in the infrastructure, which is needed to accelerate the development of AI. So I think with these investments into the infrastructure, we're gonna see AI just accelerate faster than it already has over the past two years. So things are gonna get pretty interesting. I think impact for the smaller, kind of vertical-specific software companies like us that are using AI for construction, for instance, what it means for us is just, people, they have to get on board. These larger companies, every company needs to get on board.

• 21:16Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I mean, you're talking about national home builders.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  National, yeah.

• 21:21Mike Rowe?

  Are you worried at all, either of you, about, you know, the Terminator? Are you worried? I mean, it just seems like the average person is really being asked to, you know, ignore the implications of efficiency taken to Huxley's logical end, who said, "The enemy of freedom is total anarchy, but the second biggest enemy is total efficiency."

• 21:49Mike Rowe?

  So you either ignore that, or you're just 100% on board with this is just going to dramatically improve everything. Not a lot of nuance.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think I could be that certain about anything. You can use anything for evil, of course. I think, did you see Elon Musk's new pay package that they're contemplating?

• 22:09Mike Rowe?

  Oh, it had a T in it.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, so trillion dollar pay package. Part of that was to sell a million robots, these humanoids. So if you would have asked me before that, I would be like, "Ah, Terminator, that's not gonna happen." Now we're pushing million robots out into the world, and we reach AGI, where the robots can think as well or better than a human.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  It's pretty scary. So I think at that point, yeah, we need to have a lot of regulations in place. We need to, we can't centralize AI to any one company. It really needs to be more open source, so that there could be more general oversight over it. But any one company having, controlling AGI, I think that's where things could get a little scary.

• 22:52Mike Rowe?

  And the robot thing too, I don't know how to think about that, because I have no idea what, what's the dexterity? What's the, I mean, what's the real facility of these things? Is it a Roomba with arms? Or is it a thing that can actually walk up your stairs and start turning a wrench on your toilet? Like, at some point, I think Musk said he thought there would be more humanoid robots than Americans in like 10 years or something.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:21Mike Rowe?

  I mean, like, everybody's gonna have one. Now, I don't know what that means. I don't know what they actually do, really, what they're capable of. But, I mean, you're, you said fifteen years ago, you started playing around with this. What did that even look like fifteen years ago? How did you even talk about it in a boardroom?

• 23:39Speaker 02

  Well, we didn't. Most people didn't understand it. It wasn't really dubbed as AI back then either. It was more on the techniques to build AI, so it's computer vision, machine learning. And we kind of fell backwards into it to try to solve a problem. Computer vision, machine learning, AI seemed to be the thing to solve it. Our first product that we built, because Ty and I have been.

• 24:00Mike Rowe?

  Define the problem just a little more.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:02Mike Rowe?

  Before we solve it.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  So that.

• 24:03Mike Rowe?

  I know what it is.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I was an avid runner at the time, and I'd run the same route every single day. And I wanted to know, you know, where I sped up and slowed down in my route. And so I wanted to see a visual representation of my old ghost to race against it. So as I did some research around, well, is this even possible? Computer vision and machine learning, like, kept coming up as a way to not only create a 3D digital person, but then how do you anchor that 3D digital person to the real world? So it stays on the ground.

• 24:34Mike Rowe?

  Where do you experience it? Like, are you wearing glasses?

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Wearing glasses, yeah. So I had these big bulky glasses on at the time, looking like a madman. It was like wired down to my phone. And I was running around all these parks and people were just giving me like the most weird looks.

• 24:47Mike Rowe?

  I mean, you can't blame them.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, that's fair.

• 24:50Mike Rowe?

  But it's worth pointing out, too, that if you run, and I, I used to run every morning, and I, I guess I probably fell into the same rut now that I think about it. Which is why homeostasis kind of kicks in, and pretty soon the benefits of running the same speed and the same distance.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 25:05Mike Rowe?

  Diminish. And so if you're running with someone.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 25:09Mike Rowe?

  Right? You can be pushed. But if you're running alone, you have to push yourself and that's hard. So you want to create a ghost of yourself to run with you. And what, a little faster in areas where you slow down?

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Exactly. So you would see your old self start to push you, be like, hey, this is where you're slowing down, or this is where you're, you know, speeding up. You could even set times around like, okay, I ran a six minute mile yesterday. I want to run a 545. And then your ghosts would run that pace and you could pace with your ghost. We're going to take that all different types of places where you race with your. It worked. Yeah. I think the one holdback there where we had to pivot is the hardware. Which today, I don't think you see too many smart glasses around. We're still waiting for the hardware to catch up. Groups like Apple have released heads up displays since then, but it's still in a pretty bulky form factor. So I think, yeah, once, once we get the hardware to catch up, that type of use case is going to be phenomenal.

• 26:06Mike Rowe?

  What did it do to your times? I'm curious.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  Well, with the bulky glasses, it didn't really help my times too much. But yeah, I mean, I was able to bring, bring down my times by 10, 15 seconds.

• 26:18Mike Rowe?

  Which is significant.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Huge. Yeah. Yeah.

• 26:21Mike Rowe?

  So this was a different company. This wasn't Diggs. What was this company called?

• 26:25Speaker 02

  So On the Go Platforms or OTG, as we dubbed it. We built that out. I would say we kind of just failed forward with that company. I remember when we, we went through an accelerator called the Portland Seed Fund. And on the first day, they basically put you through a three month class around how to be an entrepreneur. And on the first day, they had this list of like, here's 10 or 12 things don't do. And I picked up that list and I was like, I've made every mistake on this list.

• 26:52Mike Rowe?

  Costly nerd.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Great. But, you know, perseverance, you know, picked up. I always played sports when I was younger and grew a kind of a big chip. I didn't want to fail. And so we ended up kind of struggling to get that one to an exit. And we pitched the, or we pivoted the technology to a gesture interface because one of the issues is it was connected with your phone. So it broke the experience. You couldn't reach out and touch the virtual information.

• 27:15Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  So we took some computer vision, machine learning experience we had gained and we said, okay, well, let's interact with that virtual content with your hands. And a company came along and acquired, acquired that technology.

• 27:26Mike Rowe?

  Were you partners at the time?

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. And the one thing with that gesture technology is we did it with a single RGB camera. So where before you would need a dual camera set to even try to capture that.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:38Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I don't know what that means. RGB, red, green, blue? Yep.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:42Mike Rowe?

  Okay, where's the camera located? Is it in your?

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Heads up display, yeah.

• 27:45Mike Rowe?

  So it's all, okay.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, that must have been clunky.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Very.

• 27:50Mike Rowe?

  But you still built it and you sold it?

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Yep, yeah.

• 27:53Mike Rowe?

  So you made a little money?

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:55Mike Rowe?

  Got a little taste of like, oh.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  That was kinda cool.

• 27:57Mike Rowe?

  What'd you do after OTG?

• 27:59Speaker 02

  So we stayed at the acquiring company for about two years.

• 28:02Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  And we helped build and launch a remote collaboration software for them. So I think GE and Porsche were two of our earliest customers. So you'd send a pair of heads up displays with the soft remote collaboration software, instead of flying a human around to service these large machines. So now you could remote call somebody, an expert back at HQ, who can walk you through a fix. But we, we saw that technology and the adoption and the enterprise, and we thought there was an opportunity to bring that to consumers. And this was right before Apple released ARKit, their AR platform. And so we jumped out and we started building our second company, Stream, and applying the remote collaboration learnings to connect homeowners to brands. And our AI experience to take a camera feed and understand what's in that feed

• 28:48Speaker 02

  and start to structure it.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  So Stream connected homeowners to like Lowe's and Best Buy and Traeger and IKEA, all of our, you know, customers of our last company, for things like remote estimates and quoting. Because if you think like a Matterport scan, you use the phone to scan a place and you get a 3D model. Now think of that on like steroids. We were running it through optical character recognition to recognize serial number and model numbers. As you're on this video call, we're creating a 3D digital twin in the background in real time, so that the remote expert can take measurements to capture dimensions of the job. So that, that company too was acquired in 2019 by Front Door, who owns a bunch of home warranty brands. So we scaled that company to tens of millions of users through these great brands.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  And then our ultimate goal is to create that digital twin, but it wasn't in a very scalable way. Because you could imagine if you're calling Lowe's for a flooring estimate, that's for one room, not your whole house. So we had all these micro video calls and we're piecing together the home for the homeowner, because they gotta keep that digital imprint.

• 29:52Mike Rowe?

  How is it AI-driven? I mean, it sounds like it's just a lot of communication.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:57Mike Rowe?

  But how did the AI impact Stream?

• 30:00Speaker 02

  So we weren't only taking the video feed in, we were running it through our algorithm. So using computer vision to understand the spatial information. So to actually create a 3D model of what the camera was seeing. And then our machine learning model to recognize the different appliances and how they're oriented in 3D space. So it's actually really hard for the camera to understand what it's seeing. So we're training the camera to basically have a brain and understand everything.

• 30:26Mike Rowe?

  Is this happening because you see a need? Are people, are you responding to the market saying, hey, I really wish we had this and we don't? But like, I'm, I'm just curious to know where the inspiration comes from to actually launch something like that.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I mean, we saw it play out in the enterprise and how much ROI that these companies were getting remotely solving issues and not rolling trucks. And we thought it'd be really applicable as, you know, a homeowner, instead of going into the store to get new flooring, for instance. I would have to bring in, like, I think my dimensions are 10 by 20. Then they would give me a quote and then it turns out my dimensions were wrong most of the time. So how do you pull the context of the home and bring it into the retail store remotely? So that they could have a curated experience and provide you with exactly what you need. So is, is born out of a need and just some experience from seeing in the enterprise really work and trying to bring that into the, the consumer space?

• 31:29Mike Rowe?

  So you sold that one too?

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 31:31Mike Rowe?

  You really can't hold a job.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  I know. Yeah. And if you, if you realize, so after everyone we sell, Ty always leaves too. I don't, so he'll like, he'll go and he worked at Amazon after the last one. And after the first one, it was Lexus Nexus. So it's like, he's trying to get away. It's a little weird. We've been friends since fifth grade.

• 31:48Mike Rowe?

  I do. I enjoy it. Why has tech been so historically slow to get integrated into building? At least on a comparative analysis?

• 32:04Mike Rowe?

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• 32:45Mike Rowe?

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• 33:27Mike Rowe?

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• 33:45Speaker 03

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• 33:50Speaker 03

  I don't know if it's just the tech in general, but I do think like when it comes to tech, it's being built by folks who have never really been in, like I'm speaking for a residential home perspective. They've never really done it, so they don't quite know what problems they're solving for exactly. It's also built in a non-user-friendly way, so it's very robust, which takes a lot of time for training and setting up, which can be very cumbersome.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, you have a technologist trying to build software for an industry where they haven't felt the pain point.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. So I think that's one aspect, but then also the other aspect is in like construction in general, the generations that have gone into it have so much knowledge and they've been doing it their way and it works for them. It works well for them. And so introducing something of a technology or a new software, it might scare them or they're like, no, I'm doing it fine my way. I'm good. So there's kind of that hesitancy to make that leap into change.

• 34:45Mike Rowe?

  That's what I think is most interesting. If you think about, you know, shows like This Old House and they kind of remind you that the craftsmanship has been on the decline in a general way for generations. And so on the one hand, there's this idea that what we need to do is get back to the time when homes were built to last. And so in order to go back, you know, like that's, that's, that's a directional metaphor.

• 35:19Mike Rowe?

  AI is clearly going forward. So do we go back to go forward? Do you go forward to go backwards? Right? And, and so, I mean, how does this old house think about AI is really the question?

• 35:31Speaker 02

  I think AI allows you to go back because now AI takes a lot of the like monotonous, monotonous tasks that you have to do as a builder, tracking all the information, like Ty said, organizing it, the communication, the collaboration. It does that for you so that you can focus on the user experience and the finer details.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  You touched on something you just mentioned. I just had this conversation with somebody the other day about, because I walked into an older house. It's probably 20, 30 years old. Just you walk in to that house and you just, it just feels sturdy.

• 36:04Mike Rowe?

  Tight.

• 36:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's tight. It just, and then you walk into a new house and it's like, it's light. It's, it's, I don't want to say it feels cheap, but it feels cheap. But I think going back to your, your question or point about how we bring craftsmen back, I think are the craftsmanship back. I think that really comes down to the builder themselves and what their goal is. Like, are they in it to make money? Or are they in it to build a beautiful portfolio of homes, make customers happy, or build a beautiful sturdy product?

• 36:31Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 36:32Speaker 03

  And that also flows all the way down to the, the subs and vendors, because if everybody's looking at it just to make quick money and speed, speed, speed, you're not going to build a sturdy home that's going to last for 30, 40, 50 years.

• 36:43Mike Rowe?

  That's appealing and interesting.

• 36:46Mike Rowe?

  Is your product ultimately saving people money?

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's saving people money, money and time. So we're finding that builders that are using a software like digs are eliminating five to seven critical errors on a project, so each project that are really costly. They're eliminating 90% of truck rolls.

• 37:07Mike Rowe?

  Truck rolls?

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Truck rolls, so think in, you know, warranty. You have to roll a truck to go see what's wrong and then you come back, you capture all the product information, you come back, you see if it's in warranty, roll another truck with the material. On average, they're rolling two to three trucks for each warranty issue. So we're able to eliminate 90% of that, just because they have all the information on the home and what's potentially wrong, out of the gate. That's something we provide with that digital twin. And we're seeing during the construction process that builders are saving five to 10 hours per person on each project each week. So each employee and tradesperson that they have is just more efficient because now they have the information on what's going to be installed, what changes were made, what change orders happened.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  It's immediately accessible through digs and through our AI. You could ask digs, which is our AI chat, what's the new faucet that's supposed to be installed in bath one and immediately get the answer instead of trying to go back and look through all your texts or look through all the documents or emails to try to find that information.

• 38:11Mike Rowe?

  How big is this company going to get?

• 38:14Speaker 02

  I mean, we're selfishly, we're hoping this is the last thing, you know, we do. And this is a generational type of brand. So we, we want to take this company all the way. We think it'd be a big, big public company.

• 38:26Mike Rowe?

  So how do you get there? I mean, I know when we first talked, the idea was big builders need to understand this tech exists because it can dramatically impact their bottom line. But in the end, like who's, who's your real end user? Who's your real customer in this? Is it the builder or is it the homeowner?

• 38:48Speaker 02

  I mean, at the end of the day, it's the homeowner. If the homeowner is involved during the build, it's them, it's the client experience. It's enhancing that, but ultimately it's getting that digital twin to the homeowner to power the home facts of the home for them, to give them that digital record on how to maintain their life's largest asset. That's absolutely our end goal.

• 39:09Mike Rowe?

  How much time do you spend explaining to people how this works? And just kind of petting them on the head and say, you know, it's gonna be okay.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  It's gonna be all right. I would say three years ago, when we first started, a lot more than we do today. I think it's just, I don't know what has shifted. I think just the amount of companies that have adopted AI. It's kind of become, it's coming out of the hype cycle. So I think that helps. But I think today, most of the builders ask us, they're, they say, look, we know we need to adopt AI. We know it's going to have a positive impact on our business. We just don't know how. So help us figure out how we can implement AI in meaningful ways in our business. And it's not always the same.

• 39:51Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  But that's probably the, yeah, the main question we get. There's less fear today. Maybe when you go down more to the trades, there's a little bit. And we always assure them, like, you're working with your hands. You're not going anywhere.

• 40:05Mike Rowe?

  What is the current state of play? I think I know the answer. I just filmed with D R Horton in, in Texas on really what amounts to a recruiting campaign. And they're all in. It's like there's an alarm bell ringing throughout the industry to get more skilled workers in this thing. What's the impact of AI? Which is the first question I ask you stupidly because it's obviously on my mind. But, but let's talk about it now. You know, how is this going to help close the skills gap in construction?

• 40:38Speaker 02

  I think that's a really great and big question. I think initially, you know, there's only so many trades today. So how do you amplify your existing workforce? I think AI can help do that, make them more efficient. Beyond that, the up and coming generation, they live in their phone. They live in a digital world. And then when you try to get them to come work for a builder who works off of pen and paper, or works with some really antiquated technology, that's a really hard ask for the younger generation to come in and just have kind of a bucket of cold water splash on them.

• 41:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  So AI is going to not only be enticing for them to come, come into these different organizations. It's not only going to make them more efficient, but it's, yeah, it's just going to make them so much more productive. They're going to be not an expert, but nearly an expert when they come in. Because they're going to have a co-pilot. AI can be their co-pilot as they're onboarding. We're working on a new product. I'll give you an example. Takeoffs. So today, takeoffs are a very manual process for builders. What a takeoff essentially is, is they take the floor plan and they redraw it digitally so that they can get all the dimensions. And once they have all the dimensions, then they can understand how much flooring they need for each room, for instance. Countertop, vertical surfaces, etc.

• 41:56Speaker 02

  You need an expert to do that, to understand how to draw it out, where to start, where to pull the flooring, you know, up to the cabinet or under the cabinet, and so on. AI, we can train on all of those floor plans and rules, essentially. And within a few seconds, not weeks, we can create a takeoff. So now you can have somebody come in out of high school and they can be an expert in takeoffs. Whereas before it'd take them, you know, months and months to spin up to understand how to provide a valuable takeoff.

• 42:25Mike Rowe?

  I'm just thinking about the way people adapt, you know, I mean, for a kid coming out of high school today, it's the expectation is different, the attention span is different. They're wired for a digital.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 42:38Mike Rowe?

  Right? I guess maybe that's great news for your business when you think about who your customers are going to be in the next 10 years and it's not going to be Manila folders and a bunch of

• 42:47Speaker 02

  No, no, spreadsheets.

• 42:48Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, there's just no way.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, and because we're starting with, you know, the homeowner experience, so it has to be a really easy to use experience and we're pulling that back to builders because, as we mentioned, our end goal is the homeowner. Now it makes it really easy for any builder, no matter your age, to come in and use our software. Because it's really meant to be a consumer-grade experience for an enterprise.

• 43:13Mike Rowe?

  So, there's probably a bunch of stuff you're not allowed to talk about at this point, right?

• 43:17Speaker 02

  There's a few, yeah.

• 43:18Mike Rowe?

  I mean, it's a is the, is the plan to get bought, is the plan to go public, like you say, and just and just digs is going to be like, who do you hope to become? Or is it utterly unique?

• 43:32Speaker 02

  I think it's pretty unique. I mean, if you look at the scale of someone like a Zillow or an Airbnb, I think that's the scale of what we are talking about here. Not only just impacting, there's a, there's a really big business to impact how homes are built. I think there's an even bigger opportunity in how you own, maintain a home. So I think the scale here is infinite.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Some people call me optimistic, but.

• 44:00Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, look, you've kind of done it twice before. You know. How did you guys actually meet?

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Fifth grade.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were in fifth grade. School, yeah. And then we went to school all through high school and.

• 44:15Mike Rowe?

  So we were just friends?

• 44:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, just friends. I think the first who we wanted to, his dad was a bit of an entrepreneur and the first company we wanted to start is wanted to open up a Baskin Robbins together. So we've diverted a bit. Well, eventually all roads lead back to Baskin Robbins.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  We will get it one day.

• 44:33Mike Rowe?

  So. I mean, that's interesting. I went to high school with Chuck. We've known each other, I don't know, forty five years.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, something like that.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 44:40Mike Rowe?

  Well. He likes ice cream.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Our first customer. We're coming up on our thirtieth.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  We are.

• 44:48Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, I, I, I keep thinking about Chuck building this house thirty years ago and wondering.

• 44:56Mike Rowe?

  If you'd had this thing.

• 44:59Mike Rowe?

  How different might your life be like? I mean, really, who knows?

• 45:03Speaker 01

  It, it would have been vastly different. I'm, I'm sure of it. I mean, when I first heard about what Diggs does, I, that's, that's the first thing I thought is that this would have come in handy. Uh, in, I think it was like nineteen ninety two or ninety three. It was done in ninety three and it took about a year. Yeah.

• 45:19Mike Rowe?

  Well, I remember calling you when you were in the midst of it and saying things like, how's it going? And then just listening to five minutes of sentences that never ended and, and, and just you developed a facial tic, you know, that's, that's gone away. But I know, I mean, it was an overwhelming thing and I've never done it. I've, I've never, I've never built a house from the ground up. So I don't really know. You know, how transformational it could be. But. You must be overwhelmed with letters. Feedback.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And just back to that point is me and my wife actually went through a home build ourselves. We built a, a custom home and that was part of the inspiration for Diggs is I wanted this as a homeowner. Not only through the process, but then I was left, we actually burst a pipe. We had a cold freeze and the sink in our outdoor barbecue burst and they're like, oh yeah, you need to winterize that. It's like, I've never owned a home. I had no idea. So yeah, I got together with Ty and it was like, there's gotta be something, something here and applicable to our background.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  No, feedback, I mean.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  That's one of the things I love, especially with I call like our digs community because our customers and partners, they they have no problem telling us the good, the bad, the ugly of the product, which is amazing. You want that.

• 46:35Mike Rowe?

  Sure, works and all.

• 46:36Speaker 03

  Absolutely, because you want to build the best product that you can build for them. But yeah, we hear feedback on the daily. I was actually, I just called an HVAC company for the HVAC at our house yesterday and got started talking and having some issues with it. And then he goes, well, you're you're digs, right? Yeah. And he's like, oh, yeah, I use it all the time. And he's like, I got some feedback for you. And I was like, let's hear it. He's like, I'm sure this is what you want to hear. And I'm like, no, I absolutely want to hear it.

• 47:09Mike Rowe?

  What was it?

• 47:10Speaker 03

  Just like some small things about providing more information on a project, like the address and who's the site super and and things like that. But that's the type of stuff where hearing it directly from them and how they would use it and why it would make them better at their job, all the time, we get that on the daily.

• 47:31Mike Rowe?

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• 48:13Mike Rowe?

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• 48:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have, right now, I think we have like double the amount of homeowners that want digs. Right now, our only way to really get in is through a builder. But we are starting to see some demand start to build from homeowners saying, hey, I want this thing. Either I'm about to build or I already have a house. So for them, we're like, cool, let's learn why. And so we try to hop on, you know, regular calls every week with them to say, okay, if you are a homeowner and you weren't to come through a builder, what would you want the experience to be? So it's been really cool just to see that kind of pull, demand.

• 49:25Mike Rowe?

  Hey man, well, look, take this for what it's worth. I don't know anything about AI and I can't build a house myself, that's for sure. But it seems like there's a lesson in the marketing world, at least we're like, what did Big Pharma do? Big Pharma went on TV and created a demand for drugs that most people can't even pronounce. And the people went to the doctors and said, I would like this. I'm not comparing your product to a, you know, ED medication or something like that.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 49:55Mike Rowe?

  I mean, people need to know that it's out there.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:58Mike Rowe?

  And, you know, back to Chuck, if he knew there was a software that used AI that could have turned that job into something far less, what did you call it? Pain point driven.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:11Mike Rowe?

  Eliminate the pain points. He would have gone to the builder and said, hey, do you guys have this? And they would have said, no, we don't. And he would have said, well, I get it. I insist.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Hundred percent, yeah. And like they were saying before, there's just a thousand different things you have to think of. The builder will come to you and say, what do you want in this bathroom? You know, what faucets, what doorknobs, what doorstops, what crown molding, what trim, just everything, the color, the appliances, there's just an endless list of things. And the more rooms you have, the bigger those, these lists get.

• 50:44Mike Rowe?

  And there are only two kinds of people. There are the kinds who love those questions and love to think about it. Those are called wives.

• 50:55Mike Rowe?

  And then there's me, who you would eventually get worn down. You would just abdicate, say, I don't know, A crew, beige, eggshell.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  I got into a lot of, lot of fights with my builder.

• 51:09Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Look, man, I think, I think you got a tiger by the tail.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  It definitely feels like it. And we're, we're excited to eventually pull that switch to, to turn it on for homeowners. So I think everything that we learned today, through the builders, through the collaboration with their end customer, through the handoff and warranty experience with the homeowner, that's all just building towards this ground swell to eventually where we do open it up to, you have an existing home, or you're building a home, come get digs. Because everybody should have a digital twin or home fax on their home.

• 51:41Mike Rowe?

  And this basically all started because you just wanted to run a little faster.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:46Mike Rowe?

  And you wanted more ice cream.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  All of it's for the ice cream at the end of the day.

• 51:52Mike Rowe?

  I got to come back though, to the, to the labor force. Because I really, I am starting to think that it's been underreported, the Horton guy, I said to him, it looks like for every five who retire to come in, in your industry.

• 52:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:10Mike Rowe?

  And he said, it was about two years ago, now it's more like one and a half. You know, everybody's aging out, the basic demographic, people are having less kids, boomers are retiring. And when you go on some of these sites, especially with the custom guys, you know, you just see 55, 60 year old dudes. And, and they all just say the same thing. It's, nobody's standing in line to learn my trade. Do you worry about that at all? And I'm sorry to keep coming back to it, but I just don't know. I don't know that I understand how tech can can help that really. Or what the industry is going to do, if anything, to make a more persuasive case for the jobs that

• 52:56Mike Rowe?

  that exist in it.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it comes down to getting it back in high school. I mean, not to kind of say your talking line, but it really does. I mean, getting construction tech and programs like Copper Country is doing for their school district, that's where it begins. You need to re-educate the high school students that having a job in the trades sometimes can be a lot more fruitful than going into tech or going into other industries, and it's more future-proof in a lot of cases. So I think more programs like that, more funding that goes into re-educating kids, that there is a really great career that you can have in the trades. I think that's step one. I think where AI comes into that, I'll steal it from you, is two sides of the same coin

• 53:43Speaker 02

  for what you're doing. I think we can make those kids that are coming into the trades more efficient immediately and have a bigger impact on those companies. I also think it's a really good carrot to dangle for kids as well, because it's a really cool technology. At the end of the day, it's a really cool experience, and it's going to be fun to use. How many industries do you go into where you have such a high job satisfaction? I just read an article in Forbes that said the trades, I think it was a 90% job satisfaction for the trades.

• 54:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  Like, that's huge.

• 54:14Mike Rowe?

  It's enormous.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:16Mike Rowe?

  People will hear that, and by and large, their first reaction is, I don't believe it. They don't believe it. In the same way, I remember the first time I shared a story about a welder who was making $130,000 a year. I mean, a photo, a story, it was in the Wall Street Journal, interviewed the guy, and still, people just, they're like, nope, I was told that, no, nope, not gonna. So the resistance to accepting the reality of a career in the trades might have something to do with the resistance of believing that the tech that you're talking about. Is truly going to be accessible.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:59Mike Rowe?

  Cause it just, it just still feels like you've gotta be kidding me.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:05Mike Rowe?

  I just, it, it's another magic trick. So I don't know, it's, what is the biggest challenge then that you guys are facing? Is it just the misunderstanding or the ignorance around what AI is or what it can do? Or is it something more practical about just taking a startup and turning it into a public company that I don't really understand?

• 55:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, some of it comes back to the, the infrastructure. A lot of these, especially larger builders, they have been fairly technology adverse. I think that's pretty, you know, everyone's pretty aware of that. And so they've built their software stack in a way where it's, a lot of them are on prim, on premise, which means it's not in the cloud. So, which means it's not accessible to any type of AI experience. So for a lot of the builders that we talked to, we just start at square one and we say, okay, what's your, your technology stack? Are you on prim? Are you in the cloud? If they're in the cloud, that's a huge step forward. Um, but still there's a lot of work for them to structure their backend software, um, to be accessible for a third party AI software.

• 56:11Mike Rowe?

  So we don't need to name names, but I, I know some of the biggest builders in the world are not in the cloud.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:17Mike Rowe?

  They're still, what? PDFs doing everything on, on site?

• 56:23Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 56:24Mike Rowe?

  Like.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  Printing things out.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 56:27Mike Rowe?

  I mean, I'm, I'm not appalled by it because, you know, I'm older than I've ever been and I, I grew up with that, but I, I don't. How do you get a multi-billion dollar national builder to change course to that degree? How will you do it?

• 56:46Speaker 02

  I mean, it, I think it starts with a, a lighthouse builder.

• 56:48Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Um, so we've recently, we can't say who, uh, but we've recently partnered long-term with a top 10 builder, um, who sees the benefits and the ROI of actually implementing AI and going through all the work of restructuring their software stack to make it accessible and possible. Um, so we're working directly. With them around, okay, well, how do we structure your software system to unlock AI? And then in parallel, we're also building out, you know, some of our new functionality with them. And then I think taking that Lighthouse customer and the success story and the ROI that they're going to have, which we're talking massive ROI is what we're projecting.

• 57:28Mike Rowe?

  A return on investment. So people understand, so we're talking about a top 10 builder who's going to spend a chunk of money. So you can help drag them into the future.

• 57:40Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 57:41Mike Rowe?

  And if you do that successfully, then nine other top 10 builders are going to go, oh, what?

• 57:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%. Yeah, they all hurry up to follow in this industry. So getting that, you know, getting a really great brand to go prove it out. I think step one is the biggest, it's step one through 10, essentially. And then everyone else will follow and they should, or they're just going to get drastically left behind.

• 58:05Speaker 03

  Ryan's absolutely right with everything that he just said. And we, they all talk to one another. They're all competitors, but they all talk, they all partner.

• 58:16Mike Rowe?

  Well, they were all at the event where you and I met.

• 58:20Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 58:21Mike Rowe?

  They go to these conventions. Most people have no idea really.

• 58:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:25Mike Rowe?

  But how these industries work.

• 58:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:27Mike Rowe?

  But it's so true to have, I mean, it's Vegas, it's booze, it's debauchery, it's business. Everybody's jammed together. And so competitors have a chance to get, I'm, I'm just really amazed by the whole dynamic and what, what you can learn in that scenario.

• 58:49Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I mean, we sat at a keynote a couple of years ago for one of the conferences that we go to down here in California. And we got to listen to a CEO of a top 10 builder. And one of the things that she said that kind of stuck with us was to this other group of execs and CEOs of top 100 builders, that they're all behind the times. They're 20 years behind the times and they need to innovate now. And part of that innovation is creating these wow moment experiences. So I think for, for her to get up and say that and be like, let's, let's do something here because we all know that we're behind the times and we need to change that.

• 59:25Mike Rowe?

  It's scary to be first.

• 59:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 59:28Mike Rowe?

  As entrepreneurs, do you get, I mean, you're on a roller coaster.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Big time.

• 59:36Mike Rowe?

  Do you just get used to it? I mean.

• 59:38Speaker 02

  Well, the noble whiskey helps.

• 59:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 59:39Speaker 02

  Level them out.

• 59:42Mike Rowe?

  Well, help yourself. There's plenty around. No, but I mean, it's, it's really the, the stakes are impossibly high for you guys.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:52Mike Rowe?

  Must be exciting.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it is. I, I think for the first two companies, it was really interesting. We were, it always felt like we're expected to fail. Cause you know, we're one time, two time entrepreneurs. Now being three time, it's almost flipped. It's almost more stressful when people expect you to succeed. So we're just trying to take like every little win, remember to celebrate them. Cause when you're working towards that big, you know, long-term goal, you see, the little wins is what gets you there.

• 1:00:17Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  Cause it, it is ebbs and flows and you know, it's the toughest thing I've ever done in my life is build a company. So.

• 1:00:24Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know, I think for me, the, some ideas are so good that you can't screw them up. I mean, you can, but you gotta work really hard to do it.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Mike Rowe?

  And I think of like QVC, they did a lot of things wrong in my view from a production standpoint. And they made a lot of mistakes, but the, the fundamental idea was so good. You know, take the mall to people in rural America who can't get to the mall.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55Mike Rowe?

  Just take it to them. And, and, and that was ingenious. I was gonna do a quick sidebar when we were talking about this old house because I, I did a show before Dirty Jobs. And the idea was so good that, I mean, it's, it was on the air for 15 years. It was called Your New Home. And I, I might've talked about it at that convention. Did I? Do you remember anything about this?

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  I feel like you did. Yeah.

• 1:01:23Mike Rowe?

  This thing was so ridiculous that it was all based on the fact that if you're a residential builder.

• 1:01:33Mike Rowe?

  Well, if you're a big builder and you're building a community, you're gonna be working for seven, eight years putting this community in. And, um, and that means you need to market it.

• 1:01:44Mike Rowe?

  Right? You need to sell it. And selling a community that's under construction is totally different than selling a single standalone residential home. Like, opposite, really. And these communities, they had something that I just never really thought about before, and it was a model home. You have to have model homes, but what is a model home? It's a, it's a decorated set. And there were a bunch of them, you know, because you might have seven different models in a community that's gonna have three thousand. Anyway, the idea was, let's just sit in this set that's already decorated and interview sales agents who are in charge of selling the community.

• 1:02:28Mike Rowe?

  And I'll just ask them simple questions and they'll tell me their stories and then we'll have B-roll of all of the amenities in the community, everything that's coming. Long story short, um, the show was on the air for fifteen years. It, it sold over a billion dollars in real estate. Wow. And I, I didn't get any of it.

• 1:02:50Mike Rowe?

  Because I was, I was so interested and I thought I was so clever in, in figuring out a production model that I got paid for. I, I wasn't unhappy with it. But a few years in, I, I realized, you know, people are sitting home, they're getting decorating ideas. And then they come out later that Sunday and they've already had a tour, a virtual tour of the place. And they've already met the sales agent on the premises. So all that exposition is done. And now these people are what you guys would call qualified buyers. Yep. Right? And so, the, the sales in these communities, they, they sold out two, three years earlier than they had planned.

• 1:03:34Mike Rowe?

  Moral of the story is, it was a really good idea, unfortunately, implemented by a guy who wasn't... A real smart entrepreneur, I could see that part of it. I couldn't see the whole thing, you know?

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:03:50Mike Rowe?

  In my defense, had I gone in with a plan and explained to these builders how you're going to be able to sell out of your communities years in advance, and all I want is a small percentage.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:04:00Mike Rowe?

  They never would have agreed to it. They never would have given away the equity, right? So for a lot of people who are just clever enough to figure out a new way to do a thing, they don't get the ball over the line because they didn't see how it truly ends.

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:04:20Mike Rowe?

  I hope you're smarter than me.

• 1:04:23Mike Rowe?

  I hope you've seen the end game in this.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think we have.

• 1:04:30Speaker 02

  And I think, you know, the flip side of that is having a big vision without any execution.

• 1:04:34Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  You had a lot of execution, it sounds like, without that larger vision. And I think that's something that we balance here really well, is we started with, okay, where do we want to end up?

• 1:04:44Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  And then how do we get there? We got really fortunate with the team too, is over the past 15 years, we've just collected the most talented people we've ever worked with.

• 1:04:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  And brought them along with us, and so we have a team marching to the same drumbeat.

• 1:04:59Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, well, that's smart.

• 1:05:02Mike Rowe?

  I'll tell you, now that I think about it, and this is a good place to land the plane because it goes back to efficiency. I outfoxed myself with this thing. I was so impressed by the fact that I could come to, like, I would go down to Baltimore, and this was just on the East Coast, and it was in three states. And we only shot eight episodes a year. But, in other words, every eighth Sunday was a repeat because these communities are under construction for years, it didn't matter. So I wore the same khakis, right? And the same button-down blue shirt, and it said "Your New Home" on the little pocket there.

• 1:05:42Mike Rowe?

  And I was so delighted by the fact that I could be on the air every Sunday after Charles Caralt is doing, you know, This Morning, CBS This Morning. We had a huge, this show had so many views, it was an infomercial. And it had so many viewers that we were selling commercials into the infomercial.

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 1:06:02Mike Rowe?

  It was ridiculous, right? So it's a home run and then it's so efficient that I can go once a year for maybe two and a half weeks and shoot the entire year's worth and then go away. And that's what I did. I went back to Pennsylvania where I was living or up to New York. And this show aired every single Sunday and I wasn't there to see it. I can't stand to watch my stuff anyway, but but that's the moral of the story. I I I took my victory lap too early. I wasn't there to see that the real benefit of the show was going back to the builders.

• 1:06:44Mike Rowe?

  And we were moving crazy amounts of real estate. And I just wasn't there to see it and connect the dots. I was too proud of myself for wearing the same stupid shirt for 15 years doing the show. So, I mean, whatever, you know, you live and you learn and and AI wasn't even a thing. Well, artificial insemination was. Artificial intelligence was not, at least to my knowledge. So I get, you know, I wanted you guys on here because you're young and you're smart. And if this works, I need to be able to tell people that I I knew him when.

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  So make it work. Yeah, that's the goal.

• 1:07:24Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, it's a good goal. Maybe I'll start running again, too. Is it, does that exist, that that earlier tech? Has it evolved to the point now?

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  So we had a patent on it and everything, but the acquiring company now owns it. And I think they've sold it since then. I've tried to buy it back.

• 1:07:41Mike Rowe?

  Really?

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, to no avail yet, but.

• 1:07:43Mike Rowe?

  Because I know the glasses have evolved. It can probably, I mean, at some point, you're gonna do it with contact lenses, probably.

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, there's a company, Vuzix, that's made tons of progress in the glasses.

• 1:07:53Mike Rowe?

  What are they called?

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  Vuzix.

• 1:07:55Mike Rowe?

  Vuzix.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, they've been around for like 30 years. They were the bulky glasses I was originally using. They've got some that look like sunglasses now, so they're getting close.

• 1:08:04Mike Rowe?

  What's with all the fake names, man? I mean, digs is at least a word, I understand. It's a verb, it can be a noun, it can be any number of things. Vibzix and akimbo and, you know.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  Trying to be catchy.

• 1:08:18Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, it's a thing. Diggs, what is it? Dot com?

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  Diggs.com, yeah.

• 1:08:22Mike Rowe?

  One G or two?

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Just one.

• 1:08:24Mike Rowe?

  So some.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Not getting cute.

• 1:08:25Mike Rowe?

  Don't get cute, no extra letters.

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:28Mike Rowe?

  Ty, Ryan, thanks, man. Good luck. I'm rooting for you.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  Thanks, Mike. Thank you very much.

• 1:08:34Mike Rowe?

  A happy AI story. I love it. All right, guys, see you next week. When you leave a review, only five stars will do. Not just one or just two or just three. We were hoping four more. As in, one more than the four.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  Oh, please, one more than four.

• 1:09:08Mike Rowe?

  Just a quick review with five stars, too. From you, five stars will do.

• 1:09:21Speaker 04

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